January 05, 2007

Another Good Day (Go Team Go!)

"The House voted on Friday to pull the shadowy tradition of Congressional earmarking into the daylight, requiring lawmakers to attach their names to the pet items they slip into spending or tax bills and certify that they have no financial interest in the provisions.

More than any of several ethics rules adopted by the House this week, the earmark measure could prevent the kind of corruption that led to several big scandals in recent years, including former Representative Randy Cunningham’s sale of earmarks to government contractors for cash, gifts and campaign contributions.

The cost of earmarks has tripled in the last 12 years, to more than $64 billion annually. Some lawmakers treated their share of that money as personal accounts to dole out to constituents or, in many cases, campaign contributors.

In what lawmakers of both parties called a recognition of the backlash against such corruption in the November elections, the earmark rule the Democrats passed extends far beyond the proposal they introduced last spring and campaigned on in the fall. That proposal applied only to earmarks that are typically already well publicized.

It also goes further than a measure the Republicans passed just weeks before the November election. As in other efforts to change the earmarking process, the Republican leaders foundered against the opposition of the powerful Appropriations Committee, which doles out earmarks as it writes spending bills.

The vote on the new earmark measure was linked to a rule known as “pay as you go” that would prohibit the House from increasing the deficit by passing any new tax cuts or entitlement spending programs without offsetting them with spending cuts or tax increases."

This is really, really, really good news. The PAYGO rule will reintroduce some measure of fiscal sanity to the Congress, and the earmark provisions will force people to admit to their earmarks, which will make it possible for the rest of us to notice when, for example, a Congressman from Ohio seems to take an unusual interest in the Northern Marianas.

Meanwhile (via dKos), Pat Leahy introduced a package of bills that targets war profiteering, and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid sent Bush a letter opposing a surge in Iraq. And then there's this:

"Yesterday, in addition to the rules affecting spending, the House adopted "civility" measures that grant Republican lawmakers more opportunities to offer their views and to participate in legislative debate than Democrats say they received under Republican control."

And (from the same piece) Rahm Emanuel made a good joke:

""The one thing we can say about George Bush and his economic policy is: 'We are forever in your debt,' " Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) told his colleagues on the House floor."

Just for bril: Yes, I know about Rep. Mollohan, and I don't like it, as I have said before. But the Democrats have done more to combat corruption in two days than the Republicans have done in twelve years. The Congressional Democrats are not perfect, obviously, but I am proud of them so far.

Comments

Here's a question: When House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi talks about what Democrats plan to accomplish in the first 100 hours when Congress convenes in January, does she mean 100 consecutive hours, as in, say, from a Monday at 10 a.m. until Friday at 2 p.m., or does she mean something else?

The answer is something else. Pelosi plans to enact the Democrats' "Six for '06" agenda in 100 legislative hours -- not real hours.

What a fraud that Nancy Pelosi is! Didn't she essentially promise the House Democrats were going to stay awake and in session for four days continuously?

Are you claiming it is empirically true that "liberal" men rape more often than "conservative" men (whatever those silly modifiers mean)? I'd like to see some numbers on that.

I jumped in by suggesting that while Pretty Lady was not necessarily saying any such thing, I would be happy to do so, and moreover, would prove that liberals are inordinately rape-inclined with empirical evidence. In fact, I shall prove it using a variety of statistical measures. They are admittedly rather crude, in my opinion, but are nevertheless significantly more accurate than the measures deemed acceptable by eminent scientists such as Richard Dawkins and various American university professors.

KCinDC: I believe they have already passed a rule that says that bills must be available to members 24 hours before a vote. Not nearly as good as 72 hours online, but at least it would have prevented some of the more egregious recent abuses, and made it at least theoretically possible for people to read the things before passing them.

I mean, during the runup to the Military Commissions thingo, I was trying as hard as I could to keep up with the latest versions of the bill, and even though I knew it happened, I was still amazed at how little time there was between the last version and the vote. And with very significant changes, too.

Well, one of the overlooked statistics within this rigourous study was that we pansy liberal men never rape conservative-leaning women because we find the jackboots, whips, and knuckledusters a little too daunting. And the barking and the grring, geez, it's difficult to concentrate .. and that's BEFORE they let the dogs out.

Besides, if a liberal-leaning man comes upon a conservative-leaning woman, you'd think with all that leaning there would be some convenient falling over, but it never works out that way.

Plus you start out preying and you end up praying, which is not my diseased idea of a rollicking good time. I have found though, through my escapades, that if you offer a conservative woman a tax cut and refer to your prowess as the "cruise missile that turned Tehran into glass", life suddenly becomes springtime in East St. Louis and you can have your way. We liberal rapists can be taught the way of incentives, ya know.

Besides, I've always preferred liberal women because the raping seems to be a mutual affair. No sooner have you sipped your first drink and made the first overtures of rape small talk and you have your hands full. Then you get married and have kids and clean out the gutters and the mutuality of the troth plighting more or less continues.

Four out of five podiatrists claim just this.
Take that, Richard Dawkins.

I read in the Scientific American that the husbands of conservative women can expect only gutter-cleaning and ample incidences of tongue-lashings from the get-go. The rest of the relationship might as well be a gold bar dressed as a bunny in the cold basement of Fort Knox.

We know of course that Stalin's liberal troops subjected every woman right up to the line in Berlin to forcible rape. That figures, doesn't it? One only needs to spend a night in the New Orleans Superdome to get a taste of what I mean, right?

Now, Hitler's troops, uptight but polite gentlemen conservatives, all, never raped anyone on their way to Stalingrad. They might gas the women and then burn them in ovens and make attractive necklaces and earrings out of the women's teeth for their wives and girlfriends back home, but they never stooped to rape. Pillaging, yes, all in a day's work, but no raping.

I have cured my naughty ways. Every time my liberal rape animal, who would prefer universal health care, comes out at night, I think of Ann Coulter.

I read in the Scientific American that the husbands of conservative women can expect only gutter-cleaning and ample incidences of tongue-lashings from the get-go. The rest of the relationship might as well be a gold bar dressed as a bunny in the cold basement of Fort Knox.

Oh, come now. There's also the taking-out and putting-away of Christmas decor, of which we have approximately three-quarters of a ton. It's what I'm doing, today.

I'm still trying to train her to fetch me a beer, but so far no go. Unless she happens to be fetching one for herself at the time.

Obviously you fail to comprehend the complexity of the conservative-on-conservative union.

Before enthusing too much about "pay as you go" rules you might want to read Robert Kuttner's column on how their adoption without also reversing the Bush tax bonanza to the wealthy will merely ensure the inability of a Democratic Congress to deliver the government voters voted for.

Well me too, but it ain't gonna happen. Not only does the Dem majority in the Senate barely exist, because of Lieberman; but I would say that since I see more moderate-right Democrats like Ben Nelson than I see moderate-left Republicans like Snowe that the working majority in the Senate is moderate Republican on legislation and appointments.

I don't now what Pelosi will do with this;but I am expecting "gov't shut down" scenarios with President holding the high card because he has so little left to lose. As in the late 90s, but those Republicans simply surrendered and added spending to Clinton's spending. I don't think Pelosi can add opposing cuts to what Bush wants cut and get anything signed.

Bob, because the Bush tax cuts were mostly constructed to expire -- so that misleading projections could be put together that excluded their effects even though Republicans fully intended to make them permanent eventually -- reversing them requires only doing nothing, and you don't need much of a majority to do nothing.

... the Bush tax cuts were mostly constructed to expire -- so that misleading projections could be put together that excluded their effects even though Republicans fully intended to make them permanent eventually

Try this one on for size. GOP Rep. Boehner, commenting on the rules of conduct for the House, had this to say about the Democratic majority:

"What we really expect out of the Democrats is for them to treat us as they would like to have been treated."

Now, perhaps the fellow has just revealed a hitherto unknown sly sense of humor, and an even more hitherto unknown wry self-knowledge.

However, on the chance that he actually meant what he said, I'd have to say that irony is dead. Deader than Generalissimo Fransisco Franco. Deader than parrots pining for the fjords. Deader than satire, which Tom Lehrer pronounced the epitaph for when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Can anyone give me a link on this, what proportion and sections of the 2002 and 2003 tax cuts are constructed to expire, when, how fast? I have heard a figure of $300 billion, but is that at once in 2011, or spread over several years?

What I would like to see is Pelosi offering the Republicans more generous treatment then they gave Democrats, on the condition that Boehner write a letter explicitly requesting such treatment, and acknowledging and apologizing for Republican misbehavior when they were in the majority.

The letter should be very specific in its requests, and in its apologies.

Bob M: List (in pdf available from this non-pdf page) as of 2003 -- but some things have changed since then. More recent list (2004). More recent report on costs of extending the tax cuts, alas without list. Still more recent article, also w/o list.

CaseyL: Now, perhaps the fellow has just revealed a hitherto unknown sly sense of humor, and an even more hitherto unknown wry self-knowledge.

I wondered that. But, according to Fox News, what Boehner said was: "I think they're getting off to a bit of a rough start. In 1994 when we took control of the House, 12 years ago, it wasn't that — we wanted to treat Democrats the way we had asked to be treated. And, frankly, that's what we did. What we really expect out of the Democrats is for them to treat us as they would like to have been treated."

Today, Nancy Pelosi said that Congress would stop the escalation by legislative tactic, by splitting the Iraq ‘supplemental’ budget into two parts. The first would be for maintaining the forces already in Iraq, the second for any add-ons. In other words, Congress will fund the troops already there, but not any more.

I don't think this will work, frankly, though I applaud the effort. I think Bush will just move funds around, or escalate without funding approval. I don't know if he can do that legally, though. That might be the critical issue.

When the GOP ran Congress, Bush could break the law into tiny little pieces and then piss on the pieces without any trouble. So he might be expecting Congress to be as supine now as it was then.

But if going forward without Congressional approved-funding is not legal, and if Congress makes a point that it's not legal - repeatedly and loudly - then, then, impeachment might be back on the table, on an issue that most Americans care about, and that they oppose Bush on.

Bush and his claque will surely accuse Congress of "not supporting our troops." But Congress would be in a position to say it is supporting our troops - by preventing Bush from sending more of them off to die for no better reason than to save his own face.

Whether that would actually stop the escalation from happening is anyone's guess.

"In a move that caught some new Democratic chairmen by surprise, House rules pushed through by the Democrats this week retained the six-year limit on chairmen imposed by Republicans, but the leadership reassured lawmakers they would revisit the restrictions when there was less attention focused on the dawn of the Democratic era.

I pretty much agree with Drum, fwiw. I'm generally opposed to most term limits -- if people want them to leave, vote'em out already -- but at the very least, make the term limits long enough that people can a) gain expertise and then b) exercise said expertise long enough to get something useful out of the whole exercise.

In a vacuum, a longer term might well make sense. In the real world, I'm sure the political calculation was that Pelosi doesn't want to appear to WEAKEN protections put in place by the R's.

It really doesn't seem to me that 6 years is too short a period to get up to speed and then make use of your expertise, though, particularly since you're hardly getting put in charge of a committee on your first day in Congress. The person next in line to chair a committee presumably has plenty of opportunities to learn what the job involves before they have to do it.

I sort of thought this was Pelosi and Reid's real plan all the time. Quite the scam they pulled on the American voter. Talk about reform during the election and then try to stop it when everyone was paying less attention. I give them credit for being so devious.

Well atleast the Republican's pushed some real change through. There may be some hope for them afterall. Although, I must admit they've chosen a funny time to finally see the light.

Senate Democrats backed off promises to reform pork spending yesterday, using procedural tactics similar to ones they attacked Republicans for employing in past Congresses.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, stalled a vote on a Republican amendment that would require full disclosure of the spending provisions, also known as earmarks. The maneuver -- which continued through last night and into today -- gives Mr. Reid time to turn Democrats against the measure, which is similar to the ethics rules adopted with much fanfare last week by the new Democrat-led House.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 — After campaigning for months on a promise to tighten ethics rules, Senate Democratic leaders tried unsuccessfully Thursday to block a measure that would shine a light on the shadowy practice of earmarking federal money for lawmakers’ pet projects.

Last week the House Democrats passed an unexpectedly broad change to their chamber’s rules that would disclose the size, purpose and sponsor of any earmark.

But on Thursday, when Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, introduced the same thing in the Senate, Democratic leaders moved quickly to squash it, calling the House bill ill thought out.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said he was happy to see the House “moving things along very quickly.” But, Mr. Reid said, “frankly, I don’t think they spent the time on this that we have.”

The Democratic leaders’ effort to block the DeMint proposal was defeated by a vote of 51 to 46, surprising almost everyone in the Senate. The outcome reflected the keen desire of many lawmakers to appear to be on the side of openness and reform after an election that turned in part on Congressional corruption scandals.